Pacifism and the State

[MagusYanam]

I have been rather bothered by a question of late regarding pacifism. Strangely enough, this was after watching Paul Verhoeven's rendition of R. Heinlein's Starship Troopers. For those not familiar with the film, the premise is a society in which citizenship is based on military service. The rationale behind this is that voting is an exercise of political force, and it is only the veterans of military service who have proven that they are responsible enough to exercise such force and participate in society. Supposedly, Heinlein got this idea from the Swiss government's mandatory public service.

And that got me thinking about the inverse - the birth of Christian anarchism during the Swiss Reformation, specifically after the disagreement between Ulrich Zwingli and Konrad Grabel. Grabel's followers believed that the Christian ideal should be upheld without any compromise to worldly demands: and this included pacifism.

The followers of Grabel would go on to become a large faction of the Anabaptists, called the Swiss Brethren. They refused to serve in the militias or the government and were baptised at adulthood, following the example laid down in the Gospel. They also believed in the complete separation of the state (which they saw as dealing with control over the unholy elements of society) from the church (which they saw as the embodiment of the holy elements), and vice-versa. This led to their widespread persecution, not only in Switzerland and Europe, but also later in the United States. Nowadays, the greatest Anabaptist enclaves are in rural America and Canada.

I, like my mother, was born a Methodist, but my father and mother were attracted to Anabaptism very early on because of their focus on the value of community and their pacifism. My father had several issues with the practises and beliefs of the Anabaptists in Madison, WI, however.

His attitude was thus: if pacifists are going to be responsible in their belief that violence is never justified, and refuse to take part in that violence, they should logically then do all that is necessary to prevent that violence. He surmised (in my view, correctly) that all war is fomented by injustice of some form or another, and that people can only be driven to commit violence (in groups or individually) when they feel threatened or when they want to satiate a need previously unfulfilled, at the expense of someone else. He believed that war can only be stopped through the active exercise of justice such that all people have freedom from want and freedom from fear. Once a critical mass of people neither want nor fear, there will be no call for violence or war.

Thus, the duties of the responsible pacifist are twofold: firstly, to resist the urge to violence and as a CO to abstain from fighting during times of war; secondly and more importantly, aggressively but non-violently to further the cause of social, economic and political justice during times of peace. And in his mind, this means not withdrawal from the state and the society, but active participation in both.

So, my question was, in regards to Heinlein's idea of responsibility versus my father's, what constitutes social responsibility? Can pacifism be exercised responsibly, and if so, how?

[ST88]

Quite an erudite analysis actually, but I think we're getting caught up in a 'chicken-or-the-egg' argument here. I'm a modernist of one sort in that I see history as being driven by ideas, where as you see (from another modernist standpoint, much as you may dislike the idea) history as being driven by power politics and economics. My point with the China example is that political power can be derived directly from the strength of an idea.

Just like with religions, history is replete with examples of political power plays using the excuse of an idea. With the China example, I don't believe that Communism triumphed over Nationalism as a victory in the war of ideas, but rather as a war of physical force. For evidence I can point to Soviet and Japanese assistance (due largely to U.S. post-WWII diplomatic pressure applied incorrectly) and key Nationalist tactical mistakes. In short, the battle was lost due to tactics and strategy, not the superiority of ideas. It is true, however, that these ideas may cause the rank-and-file to fight harder and/or longer for the cause. But communism is a flawed ideology, as has been demonstrated by numerous nations over the last 100 years or so, with or without U.S. pressure. Even the CCP is no longer a strictly C party, but is instead embracing certain aspects of capitalism and even democracy if some news reports can be believed.

In France (to use another example), liberals opposing an increasingly popular monarchy overthrew it not on the strength of their appeal to the ordinary Frenchman's pocketbooks, but to the ordinary Frenchman's idealism.

I think it is rather naive to assume that the French Revolution was carried out successfully because of an appeal to the hoi polloi's idealism. I think the modern expression of "Eat the Rich" would be more applicable to that situation given the Reign of Terror that happened afterwards and the eagerness with which Napoleon was accepted. I.e., a Monarchy that didn't promote such an inequitable system of economics from top to bottom might still be in existence today, much as other European countries still have royal families such as they are.

As you have rightly gathered, I see much of history as assertions of power over resources, either actual or political, with (usually) trumped up casus belli based on pre-existing prejudices among the people who would be doing the fighting.

Okay, very, very bad example on my part. Perchance I was giving fundamentalists more than their due. But you still have to answer my point about the rich Democrats.

and on the other hand you have wealthy New England liberals voting Democratic even though Republicans would do more to allow them to keep their money and power.

You may be right about the money. But power? Come on. Power begets power. It's the same thing on both sides.

I will point out, however, that Christianity didn't take hold in the world consciousness until it was used as an excuse for violence.

But if Christianity wasn't 'on the radar', as I take it you mean, why was Christianity and Christian nonviolence an object of such concern for the Roman Emperors directly prior to Constantine? Why did they care if some far-left radical Jews didn't want to join the army?

Rome was paranoid, plain and simple. Allowing dissent is a show of weakness. Rome was such a far-flung empire that it was hard enough to hold onto the ends without word getting around that a 'bunch of left-wing radicals' were showing up the Red-and-Gold Army. It's the Rome way or it's the Highway.

People don't persecute other people just for the hell of it. I would argue that persecution only happens because one side fears the other - fundamentalists see modernism and post-modernism as a threat; Saddam Hussein saw Kurds and Shi'ites as threats to his rule; the CCP saw pro-democracy activists during the 1980's as a threat. In this case, what did the Romans have to fear from the Christians?

I'm sure they didn't know what those people were really up to. The Bible says that the Pharisees feared him so they asked the Romans to execute him (presumably because it was more convenient to have the pagans overlords do so). The Romans carried it out in order to placate what they saw as a contentious population. In this case, the Romans feared what would happen if they didn't execute him. I don't think his followers had much to do with it -- i.e., it was a political decision.

Because I view violence as a tool, war itself does not have a cause in and of itself, rather it is subservient to the larger cause.

And the way I see it, once you use violence as a tool in the propagation of a larger cause, you've already lost even the furtherance of that cause. Christianity lost its soul to power politics; the Cathars and later the Weathermen violenced themselves out of existence; the Indian independence movement destroyed a unified India when it turned away from nonviolence.

Ideas survive because they are attached to the victors. Sometimes the ideas help the battle, sometimes they make no difference. Is Christianity really less Christian because there are some right-wing televangelists who whisper into the White House's ear?

As to those other examples... is this really a trend? The Cathars lost because they had virtually the entirety of Western Civilization against them. It would have made no difference if they had stood up and said: "I regret that I have but one life to give for my religion", because they would have been mowed down out of existence anyway. I can't say much about the Weathermen, but from what I have read, it looks like it was largely an organizational issue (none). And an India split along roughly religious lines has many fathers. You will find throughout history examples of violent resistance that worked and that didn't work. Where it didn't work, I would hazard a guess that the main reason was that it was applied incorrectly. Where peaceful resistance has worked, it would be a special case, and it would be disingenuous to assume that this tactic could be applied to any situation.

In any event, none of this is evidence against viewing violence as a viable tool. You can hit yourself with a hammer just as well as the nail if you don't know how the hammer works.

There will always be a case where diplomacy fails, where appeasement will not work.

Okay, firstly - nonviolence is not appeasement. Appeasement is where you just let the British take over India or New Zealand without any show of resistance. Nonviolence is where you make a stand, and you keep it - even if they mow you down, even if they try to humiliate you. The Maori of Parihaka won their rights in New Zealand this way, even though it took the better part of a hundred years and it cost Parihaka a lot of lives and a lot of people's freedoms.

"Non-violence" may not be "appeasement", but there's a very fine line. It should be remembered that Parihaka was one "battle" that was arguably part of a larger campaign. Parihaka is a great story precisely because it was conducted in the aftermath of a British-Maori war. It is a terrific example of bravery. I have to ask, though, if the Maori example of peaceful resistance -- here -- succeeded for reasons that were completely out of their control. The taking of Parihaka was an illegal move -- as was admitted later -- on the part of the local authorities, however it was done in the context of the New Zealand Land Wars, which is difficult to ignore. The threat of violence against the British was, I'm sure, palpable because of it. There are plenty of examples of violence that went alongside that one incident.

Perhaps you should read about the rescue of the Danish Jews or the Weisse Rose movement. Better yet, Mark Kurlansky's book on Nonviolence is a quick read.

Perhaps I will. I would love to learn more about these things.

It wasn't until the race riots of the late 1960s that Civil Rights legislation was taken seriously by regional governments. Not that the violence was or was not justified, but that it was a part of the equation.

It took a number of things to enforce CR legislation, up to and including federal police action. But it seems from this perspective to be the case that the race riots did more to drive Middle America's sympathies in the opposite direction than they did getting the government to enforce legislation that was already on the books. I think that Nixon's election and the subsequent backslidings in treatment of blacks were the direct result of the Civil Rights movement alienating itself from the public through violence.

Middle America's sympathies notwithstanding, public opinion was irrelevant if the authorities weren't willing to enforce the laws. It's true that the Black image in white America's consciousness took on a more militant hue in light of this, but you have to admit that this didn't matter all that much in terms of law. Litigation solves everything!

And, come on now, you want to argue Nixon? Social upheaval as a whole is just one aspect of the story. Nixon's tenure wasn't even all that harmful socially & his election was not a defeat when viewed in retrospect. De-segregation? Started under Nixon. Affirmative Action? Started under Nixon. The color-blind idea of law? Started under Nixon.